Virgin Money the latest to increase rates

Virgin Money joining the queue tomorrow tells you this isn't a blip, it's a trend. Rates increasing by up to 0.3% higher, is not a rounding error on a mortgage. What worries me most is trackers moving too. Trackers have been the fallback for people happy to gamble on rates falling, and that gamble is getting more expensive by the week. The cheap option is disappearing just as fast as the calm in the Middle East, and once it's gone, it's gone. If you've got a decision to make on your mortgage, make it now, not when the next lender pulls their range.

Virgin Money becoming the second major lender in a day to increase fixed rates suggests this is developing into a wider market repricing rather than an isolated move. Increases of up to 0.30% are significant and show how quickly higher swap rates are feeding through to mortgage pricing.

The important question now is how many other lenders follow and how quickly. If wholesale funding costs remain elevated, borrowers could see the choice of sub-5% and other more competitive fixed deals narrow quite quickly.

Déjà vu all over again. Labour came in back in 2024 promising to spend, and the bond markets never really bought the numbers. Burnham has started in exactly the same way. Yes, there are global factors, but the market is reacting to what he has said and what he hasn't.

Gilts have spiked in the last few days, so this was inevitable. Virgin Money is one of many, and more will follow within days.

If you are remortgaging in the next six months, pull your finger out and move now. Rates are going up, not down.

I think this is likely to run to the Budget. After that, anyone's guess.

Virgin Money joining the rate-hike parade is the clear tipping point that moves this from a specialist lender blip to a mainstream headache for everyday borrowers. When household brands follow niche lenders in raising rates by up to 0.3%, it signals that the recent high-street mortgage price war is officially over.

For consumers, this is a loud wake-up call that waiting for rates to plummet further is a high-risk strategy. The wholesale funding volatility driving these hikes means the lending landscape is shifting weekly.

From a brokerage perspective, this isn't just about higher monthly payments; it is an immediate tightening of affordability constraints. Borrowers who were hovering on the edge of passing lender stress tests yesterday will find their buying power reduced tomorrow. If you have an offer on the table or a remortgage looming, locking in a rate now is the only way to insulate your household budget from this sweeping upward trend.

This is how a repricing cycle starts, not with a bang, but with one lender quietly beating another to the punch. Virgin moves Friday, Coventry follows next week, and neither of them is doing it because they want to, they're doing it because the cost of money underneath every fixed rate has shifted, and somebody has to pay for that shift.

Sadly, it's borrowers and with Virgin's fixed rates up 0.30% on both the 2 and 5-year deals, trackers dragged along behind at 0.10%, remortgage customers spared the worst of it but not spared entirely. Nobody rings a bell when this starts, it just arrives lender by lender, until the cheap deals you were waiting on quietly stop existing. If you're still sitting on a decision, you're not being patient, you're watching the horse bolt out of the stable.

Virgin is the latest lender to join the rate hike rollercoaster and expect more of the main high street lenders to follow suit soon. We are hoping this is just a flash in the pan whilst this latest round of global volatility takes a little while to settle. All eyes are on the SWAP markets which dictate fixed rate pricing, and also the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee meeting on the 17th September to decide what to do with Base Rate.

Virgin won't be the last. When the cost of money underneath fixed rates moves, lenders reprice one by one, and we're in one of those phases. The driver has a fresh element this time: as well as the Middle East feeding into swaps, there's a clear gilt-market flavour, with the bond market nervous about government borrowing ahead of the Budget, which pushes up the funding cost sitting under every fixed rate. So the cheaper deals are being withdrawn lender by lender, and the choice available today may not be there next week. I'd still be careful about reading this as a firm new upward trend. Swap and gilt moves can reverse as fast as they arrive, and a lot depends on what the Budget actually delivers. The bigger picture hasn't changed: the monthly cost of borrowing is still stretched, which keeps the market subdued regardless of a 0.3% move either way. Until that eases, expect more of this jumpiness, in both directions.